Non-technical IndieWeb: Fun, Creativity, Community, and “Content”

I wish the indieweb had more content that wasn’t about the indieweb
— simulacrum party (@simulacrumparty) December 19, 2020

The hard part of making cool websites isn’t the tech, it’s the content! Of course I fall into the trap of writing a new ssg every six months as well because it’s easier and safer than writing or drawing or playing music or something interesting and exciting
— simulacrum party (@simulacrumparty) December 19, 2020

If possible, attempt to read the word “content” in these posts without the unsavory connotations with which the last couple of years have saddled that word
— simulacrum party (@simulacrumparty) December 19, 2020

I resemble that remark.

rakhim
–Credit: Rakhim

Um…

Er… I mean…

I resent that remark. 😉

The point of having a website is putting something interesting on it right?

The IndieWeb wiki does tend toward the technical, but many of us are working toward remedying that. For those who haven’t found them yet, there are some pages around a variety of topics like poetry, crafts, hobbies, music, writing, journalism, education, and a variety of other businesses and use cases. How we don’t have one on art (yet) is beyond me… Hopefully these might help us begin to use our sites instead of incessantly building them, though this can be a happy hobby if you enjoy it.

I have come to suspect that slowly redesigning your website (forever) provides almost exactly the same kind of light absorption & calm satisfaction as knitting or embroidery
— Robin Sloan (@robinsloan) December 13, 2020

If you’ve got an IndieWeb friendly site, why not use it to interact with others? Help aggregate people around other things in which you’re interested. One might interact with the micro.blog community around any of their tagmoji. (I’m personally hoping there will be one for the stationery, pen, and typewriter crowd.) One might also find some community on any of the various stubs (or by creating new stubs) on IndieWeb.xyz.

For more practical advice and to borrow a proverbial page from the movie Finding Forrester, perhaps reading others’ words and borrowing or replying to them may also help you along. I find that starting and ending everything from my own website means that I’m never at a loss for content to consume or create. Just start a conversation, even if it’s just with yourself. This started out as a short reply, but grew into a longer post aggregating various ideas I’ve had banging around my head this month.

Rachel Syme recently made me think about “old school blogs”, and as interesting as her question was, I would recommend against getting stuck in that framing which can be a trap that limits your creativity. It’s your site, do what you want with it. Don’t make it a single topic. That will make it feel like work to use it.

If you started a niche blog (and I mean old school geocities/Wordpress/blogger blog, not a newsletter) right now, what would it be about? Don’t overthink it.
— rachel syme (@rachsyme) December 8, 2020

The ever-wise Charlie Owen reminds of this and suggests a solution for others reading our content.

Having said that, I’m gonna update my website soon two that you can filter the RSS feed by tag, eliminating shit you don’t wanna see.

I can do that because I own my website, unlike on this hellhole where we’re beholden to twitters awfulness. #indieweb
— Charlie Don’t Surf (@sonniesedge) December 19, 2020

Of course if building websites is your passion and you want to make a new one on a new platform every week, that’s cool too. Perhaps you could document the continuing refreshing of the process each time and that could be your content?

Of course if this isn’t enough, I’ll also recommend Matthias Ott‘s advice to Make it Personal. And for those with a more technical bent, Simon Collison has a recent and interesting take on how we might be a bit more creative with our technical skills in This Used to be Our Playground.

In any case, good luck and remember to have some fun!

Published by

Chris Aldrich

I'm a biomedical and electrical engineer with interests in information theory, complexity, evolution, genetics, signal processing, IndieWeb, theoretical mathematics, and big history. I'm also a talent manager-producer-publisher in the entertainment industry with expertise in representation, distribution, finance, production, content delivery, and new media. View all posts by Chris Aldrich